Shoulda Been a Cowboy (Rough Riders 7)

“You in pain now?”

“Yeah.”

“How bad?”

“It’s been worse.”

Domini rattled off a Russian phrase.

Hell, she only swore in Russian when she was really pissed. He attempted to remove his stump from her hands. “Let me do this. I…you know my family ain’t ever seen me—”

“Vulnerable?” she supplied. “The injured war hero Cameron McKay has a chip on his shoulder the size of his missing leg, when it comes to letting his family see his stump.”

Cam’s mouth dropped open in shock.

But his wife wasn’t finished. “I can see how you’d hate all the love, support and help they’ve offered you. That has to suck.”

“Domini—”

She got right in his face. “I understand that you don’t want to show your stump to the world at large. But these people—” she gestured to the group watching them very closely from afar, “—aren’t the world at large. They care about you. They always have, they always will. What don’t you get about that?”

“You sent Keely away,” he pointed out.

“I’m not talking about Keely. Besides, if I wouldn’t have told her to back off, you would have.”

True.

“Your inability to let your family see, just once, what the damn war did to you physically, makes you emotionally handicapped, and that is way worse than losing your damn leg.”

A hot wave of shame washed over him.

What could he say? Domini was exactly right. Yet, no one had dared say it to him before now. Ballsy, this soft-spoken woman he married.

He turned his head, but instead of facing away, he looked toward the family members who hadn’t gone far after the directive from his suddenly bossy wife.

In truth, his family never had gone far. They’d rallied around him from the second he’d been back on American soil. Never complained when he’d banned them from the hospital. Understood when he claimed the need for privacy. Had they resigned themselves to the fact he’d never be the man he was?

You aren’t the man you were and maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Talk about a day for epiphanies.

Domini touched his face. “You mad at me?”

He kissed the inside of her wrist. “Yeah, I hate that you’re right. So what do I do? Lay here and let them file over and gawk at me like…” I’ve always feared they would?

The pack of dogs chasing a squirrel brought Ky running past. He skidded to a stop. Behind Ky were the rest of his nephews. His whole body stiffened as he braced himself for their stares. And questions. And disgust.

Ky peered at his stump without apology. “So did it hurt when they chopped it off?”

“I don’t remember, but it hurt afterward.”

Gib asked, “Didja cry?”

“Yep.”

“I prolly woulda cried too,” he said solemnly.

Out of the mouth of babes.

Thane edged closer to the prosthetic. “Is that a robot leg?”

“Sort of.”

His hazel eyes went wide. “Like in Transformers?”

“If it was like in Transformers, Uncle Cam could turn his leg into an arm,” Ky chided.

Before Cam answered, Gib said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if he could turn it into a machine gun?”

“That’d totally be cool!”

“Yeah! Or how about some of them knives?” Thane said, adding a slashing motion.

The boys wandered off, debating the merits on the coolest robotic body parts.

Cam frowned. That was the extent of it? That was what he’d worried about? Sort of anticlimactic.

Soft fingertips gently traced the red marks on his stump. Domini said nothing; she just touched him and he felt it clear down to his soul. He mouthed, “I love you,” and she gave him that special serene smile.

Four shadows fell across him. He looked up as Carter, Colby, Cord, and Colt crouched down.

A tense minute passed when no one spoke.

“Sorry about the boys. They were…curious,” Carter said.

“No harm. I can’t say as I blame them. We’da all done the same thing at their ages.”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, it sucks ass that this happened to you, bro,” Colt said.

Murmured agreements.

Colby poked the fake leg. “How in the hell you walk on this every day is beyond me.”

“Obviously I didn’t do such a bang up job of walkin’ on it today.”

Another bout of silence.

Cord cleared his throat. “I admire the hell outta you for even tryin’.”

“We all do,” Carter added. “But as long as you’re a captive audience, we ain’t letting you up until we’ve had our say.”

Fucking awesome.

“Since you came back you’ve forced us to see things in a new light in this family. So it’s ironic you can’t see what’s right in front of you,” Carter said.

“Did you think we’d look at you differently just because you’re missing a goddamn leg?” Colby’s eyes bored into him. “Did you honestly f**king believe that we’d somehow see you as…weak?”

“Yeah, I did. Look at me. I’m sitting in the f**king skunkweed. I can’t get up by myself. That makes me weak.”

“No, that makes you stupid,” Cord fired back.

“Picking on the cripple, that’s nice, bro.”

Domini didn’t pipe in to defend him. She stayed silent and watchful.

Colby’s arms were crossed over his chest. “I think what Cord—and all of us are sayin’—is we’re goddamned glad you ain’t dead. If anyone is weak in this family, it’s us, because we haven’t kicked your sorry ass before this. We just let you be. Well, that bullshit is over, little bro, I guarantee it. You’re part of this family whether you’re ranchin’ with us or not. Whether you like it or not. So get used to it. We’re gonna be in your face and in your life like we should’ve been all along.”

Cam stared at Colt. Then Cord. Then Colby. Then Carter. His embarrassment at how he’d treated his brothers vanished when he understood how goddamn lucky he was to have them. How he had a chance to make this—another thing that’d gone wrong in his life—right.

“Don’t you have something to say?” Colt prodded.

“You wanna know what sucks worse than ranching?”

“Nothing?” Carter offered.